Small world, I wish.  I know there are other families out there and I want to reach out to them.

So I have my visit on Sunday, and it goes well, but when we ask to go for a walk, we are denied.  Not enough staff.  So we suck it up, as we often do, and enjoy just hugging and being together.

Since the closure of Hagedorn I can only say, and I am not the only one saying it:  the climate is just not the same.  The veracity of the staff who took on this particular case is just so overloaded, that I actually feel sorry for them.  The hospital is so understaffed, that, for the first time ever, we actually heard an announcement, right around the time we expected to hear:  ‘Visiting hours are over’….we heard instead: ‘There is a staff emergency; all staff must not leave until they check with administration’ which  means they were so short staffed, they couldn’t let any staff go… Now, over the years: I have heard staff commiserate when there is an incoming snow storm, or other weather emergency, but this was the first time I heard an actual call for staff to stay in place, till further instructions on a beautiful, and I mean beautiful, summer day.

Our visit went well, we are happy to be together, he misses everyone, especially his grandparents.  His grandparents’ birthdays are so close; it’s an enigma, one which our family has enjoyed for…almost 60 years…. Dad: August 21, Mom: August 24, but both are undergoing cataracts surgery for the next few weeks, so phone calls (and you already know the disgraceful manner as to which these patients have to communicate by that one, which hopefully works, Payphone), make them incapacitated to join us for a few weeks for a visit.

So, if it is okay (and it is not) we miss not only our walk, but our outdoor walk on the ‘courtyard’ where there are sunflowers galore and many butterflies and other flowers.

But this weekend I am alone, so I ask no questions, I make no Shirley MacLaine like performances; like in ‘Terms of Endearment’ (mostly because I exhausted that act during another family crisis in the same county, different hospital).

And I will go back this weekend, and will probably hear the same vaguely uncomfortable compliance by the staff; maybe if it is not raining, and they have the staff, we will get to go for a little walk.  I like going for a walk, with my son, I hate to see him idle and having to ask for his basic right, to walk, to exercise, to go out of doors.  Vitamin D is not for young people who are unable to go out in the sun. Prisoners have more rights.